Internet Sales Pay Plans: Back to the Drawing Board?

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Jason,

Awesome setup! I like how you've separated yourself from the traditional "Internet-guy" model. Of course, retail is retail, but every market is different - meaning, your exact setup probably wouldn't have the same success around the nation, but there is something to learn from it. I'm glad to hear there is a business model like yours thriving. I've felt for a long time the Internet department should be more of a creative marketing department than a one to one sales generating department. Thanks for sharing! Mind giving Joe and me a site to check out?

 

[Wayne Anderson]

Alex,

I love your "Make a Deal". That's the right path.

Wayne

 

[Paul Rushing]

I have returned to my position as an ISM due to my families health insurance premiums tripling and the dealership I was working for having a profitable department turning into an shell. Two very different situations able to meet to fill mutual voids.

Of course the first thing we discussed was a pay plan and expectations and there was a lot of mutual give and take and a good compromise resulted, both parties were happy with the outcome.

Of course the biggest pitfalls to a "transactional payplan" when marketing the dealership online is that not every sale can be measured, but this can also be said about any other traditional advertising platform.

I believe your marketing efforts should be tied directly to how you are paid. If you are paid transactional you need to give your customers a reason to do business with you via the web and your marketing efforts should be to brand you and your service give them a substantially unique reason to contact the internet department head on.

I cringe when I see things like this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Basically the idea is that a happy Internet buyer, while good for the dealership, is bad for Internet Sales, because it's likely that customer will just come back to the SP as a previous, and send referrals directly to the store, when all those people could otherwise be potential Internet sales, submitting third party leads or searching Google for local Nissan dealers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
That may possibly where dealerships, salespeople and managers will never have a true meeting of the mind, but that is where an internet department can shine and separate themselves and provide easily trackable results.

Remember the road to the sale the last step is follow-up. That is where technology can outshine traditional methods. Make the web part of the follow up process and give people reasons to to initiate a new transaction and send referrals via the net. You have these customers on your list make the best use of it. Create a unique web delivered proposition or promotion. There is money in the list, but the fortune is in the follow up!!

While there may not a perfect answer to this problem keep in mind internet marketing is wholly transactional based. A good example are the books in left side bar here. Jeff will earn a commission if you purchase directly from amazon by clicking on one of them and looses it all if you buy it a local Barnes and Noble because you saw it on his blog. You win some and you lose some. Amazon wants you to buy from Jeff's link at amazon.com or even better buy from amazon because you typed in amazon.com in your browser and searched for it then bought it. They will make 4-8% more that way.

Seth Godin on the other hand could care less where you buy the book and is glad that Jeff is merchandising it for him. He will make money no matter where you buy your "Meatball Sundae" from.

The end result is a transaction....

Excellent book by the way and a must read if you are serious about selling anything online.

 

[Jeff Larsen (blog)]

What is the secret to a successful, sales producing Internet Department?

Delivering the online shopper from behind the computer to the dealerships doorsteps, in my opinion.

Sure there are many ingredients inbetween that assist; websites, SEO/SEM, CRM/ILM, and online advertisers. None of the above have I yet been able to fully maximize at a dealership I worked at because of the time consumption involved. For example...

I only get paid on the vehicles I sell via commission, taking the consumer from lead to delivery. Not for taking photos, writing the descriptions, or troubleshooting vehicle feeds for accurate information that benefits the entire dealer group, not just my "Internet Sales". We carry 10 manufacturers across 5 rooftops; 400 new and over 130 used cars in stock at all times.

If at any one time, the above ingredients lack, it directly affects my sales. But all that matters is 'What were my internet sales/gross' at the end of month, not taking into consideration other variables. I have offerred assistance/coached those between myself and owner that there are better proccess's to sell more cars from the Internet Department, but only get the deer in headlights look.

Adding to Alex's article on this subject: Are there many or just a few other's in the same position as myself; sales, IT, website maintenance that only get paid on performance?

Side note Joe Pistell, there is a company now that reveals shoppers true identity and/or corrects false lead information before arriving to the dealership ILM/CRM tool. Contact me through Mr. Kershner and I will get back to you.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Wayne - thanks!

 

[Reis Hauser]

I just want to let Jeff know he is not the only one who get's paid the way he does. I do have to say that I have a manager and owner that is probably more progressive than most and is willing to listen to the idea's I have and spend money on internet advertising. However I am only still paid on my direct sales and gross. As internet manager's across the nation i think know. Gross is not the best via internet sales. Maybe I'm wrong thinking that. IF so I would to know how the other manager's making large grosses are doing so. Anyway that is one of the biggest problems I have is getting shopped and having another dealer cut my legs off at the knee. I think that I have a fairly good pay plan going but there is really no recognition on how many customer's I personally am driving to the dealership doing exactly what Jeff has been saying, from taking pictures, maintaining the website, making contacts from not only autotrader and cars.com but many other sources. From all the research I've read that nearly 90% of customer's at least look online before visiting a dealership now and days, I have a tough time believing my 12-15 personal sales per mo is all our sites are bringing to the dealership. How do you convince the big man signing the paychecks to increase or realize the actual profit being brought to the dealership with no hard facts saying this many people came in from my hard work????? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

[jason (blog)]

Joe: the url is http://www.libertyauto.com
nothing will really jump out at you with it, and the used car side just got written over by some old templates this weekend Basicly, I found a few things to try to set us apart from other dealers, and try to get it accross to the prospect without them having to read any copy (people were ignoring the copy and contextual links - maybe we have a lot of ADD shoppers!). The site is always in a state of flux, as I always test new things (example, i recently removed the chat feature, changed color schemes, etc). My goal with it is this: when someone comes to our site, I want them to think "hmm, I should go check these guys out".
Note: Against my recommendations, the owner and sales manager insisted on doing an invoice sale this month on our hottest product (wranglers). business is slow this month, and they're sweating it some I guess since we have 30 of them sitting here .. I pointed out that we still were on target with our wrangler sales this month, and that we didn't even have 60 days supply on hand..

alex: I think our set-up evolved this way because I was a hard-core techie and our staff had serious issues with the idea of hiring dedicated ISM's! Of course, none of them were willing to give up floor traffic, etc Since my father owns the place, I could have actually done the traditional ISM if I wanted too, but by then our internet sales had broke 30 a month and I thought it would be counter-productive.

 

[jason (blog)]

reis: I guarantee you more then 50% of your true internet sales are going under the radar as drive-ups... simply having the customer themself fill out a simple multiple chioce survey in finance will reveal the truth (it did for us). Last month we sold 10 cars from autotrader - and 8 of them never called or emailed, they saw us online and just drove out. I had some initial resistance to the survey from the staff, but I simply asked "why are we afraid to know what marketing actually works"

Amazing - when we no longer relied on the sales staff to identify what was driving our floor traffic, but simply asked the customer, we went from 70% 'local - drive by', to just 5%!! LOL Oh, and the internet went from 5% to 70% of our prospects

 

[jason (blog)]

alex: I like your "make my deal"

 

[Joe Pistell]

Jason,
Be sure the sales reps don't fill out the forms "on behalf" of the customer. I had some reps whos customers always had the same answers and funny as it sounds, all his customers were from cold calling or referals! hahaha...